Murder and rivalry: The intercepted BlackBerry messages of the mob

Salvatore Montagna, a major Montreal crime
boss, became a target of the rival Desjardins clan. Intercepted BlackBerry
messages revealed a major turf war that culminated in a murder on the
Assomption River.

STÉPHANE GRÉGOIRE/FOR THE GLOBE
AND MAIL

RCMP surveillance of the Montreal
Mafia uncovered a power struggle and a plot by one group to kill a rival
leader, as Tu Thanh Ha andLes Perreaux report. Here is a look into the mob
world through their BlackBerry messages

TU THANH HA AND LES PERREAUX

The morning that Salvatore
Montagna, one-time boss of the Bonanno crime family, was shot three times and
died on a snowy river bank ‎outside Montreal, his archenemy
Raynald Desjardins was having breakfast elsewhere in town with his daughter and
chatting about her wedding photo album.

Shortly after the killing, Mr.
Desjardins sent a terse Blackberry message to his associate, Vittorio Mirarchi:
“Done.”

“Perfect,” came the reply.

Police who were wiretapping Mr.
Desjardin’s mobile phones immediately suspected he was behind the 2011 murder.

The next evening, Nov. 25, 2011,
an RCMP sergeant, a member of Special I, the section handling electronic
intercepts, arrived outside Mr. Desjardins’ house with a portable device that
tracked cellular signals and tried to identify what other mobile phones were
inside.

It was part of a 16-month
surveillance operation that led police to charge Mr. Desjardins and seven
others in connection with the murder of Mr. Montagna.

Salvatore Montagna, former Bonanno group boss.
His body was discovered on the Assomption River.

The suspects, who thought their
Blackberry messages were secure, did not realize the RCMP read their words as
they plotted against their enemies.

However, the technology that
police used to build their case also became its Achilles’ heel, with the
prosecution agreeing to a plea earlier this year on lesser charges rather than
revealing more in court about the RCMP’s cellphone-tracking devices.

On Friday, a judge lifted a
publication ban on the court proceedings, revealing for the first time details
of a case that pitted old-style mob violence and state-of-the-art surveillance
technology.

This is the story of the men who
tried to claim power while the Godfather of the Montreal Mafia was in prison, a
rare peek into the city’s underworld during a violent, volatile time.

________________________________________

Rizzuto’s confidante

Mr. Desjardins, was a long-time
associate of the late Vito Rizzuto, the most powerful Mafia don in Canada.

Mr. Desjardins said in court that
he met Mr. Rizzuto in 1979. It was around that time that the Sicilian-born Mr.
Rizzuto took over the Montreal Mafia, which until then was run by Calabrians.

The Quebec-born Mr. Desjardins
became a close confidant of Mr. Rizzuto, according to court documents.

“Since you were young, you’ve
moved up in the world of the Sicilian Mafia. You adopted their values, espoused
their way of life and practised their criminal activities,” a 2000 parole board
decision said about Mr. Desjardins.

For years, police tried to nab
the two men.

In 1987, Mr. Rizzuto and Mr.
Desjardins were charged with smuggling 16 tonnes of Lebanese hashish to
Newfoundland.

Quebec mobster Raynald Desjardins in an
undated file photo. He was arrested in the murder of Mr. Montagna.

The case collapsed after the RCMP
was caught trying to record the conversations of the accused and their lawyers
in their St. John’s hotel during the trial.

In 1993, Mr. Desjardins was
arrested for conspiring to import 700 kilos of cocaine from Venezuela.

He got a 15-year sentence. Mr.
Rizzuto, who was heard on wiretaps, was not charged.

Afterward, Mr. Desjardins boasted
that he had gone to prison for Mr. Rizzuto, Montreal police investigator
Nicodemo Milano later testified at an inquiry.

By the time Mr. Desjardins was
released in 2004, his mentor was behind bars, awaiting extradition to the
United States for his role in a triple murder in Brooklyn.

Mr. Rizzuto’s arrest started a
decade of turmoil in Montreal’s underworld, as his clan was weakened by murders
and police crackdowns.

A new player appeared in Montreal
to claim the throne: Mr. Montagna.

Born in Canada, he had lived in
New York since he was a teen and was nicknamed “Sal the Iron Worker” because he
owned an ironworks company.

In 2006, U.S. law enforcement
agencies in New York first alleged that Mr. Montagna had become the acting boss
of the Bonanno family.

Because he had only Canadian
citizenship, U.S. officials deported him in April, 2009, putting him on a
flight to Montreal.

‎Mr.
Desjardins said in a interview with the newspaper La Presse that he stayed
clean after his release from jail, earning a living in the construction and
condo business.

However, the Charbonneau inquiry
into corruption in the construction industry heard that he had managed to gain
influence in a trade union.

Labour organizer Ken Pereira
testified that he complained that his boss at the FTQ-Construction union,
Jocelyn Dupuis, was inflating his expense claims. Mr. Pereira was then summoned
to a meeting with Mr. Desjardins.

“Listen, Ken,” Mr. Pereira said
Mr. Desjardins told him. “I don’t know if you know, but I did 11 years in
prison. I kept my mouth shut, I did my time, and that’s the way it should be.”

Mr. Pereira testified that he got
scared. “At that moment, I discovered that Jocelyn Dupuis, who I thought was
the boss, wasn’t the boss. Raynald Desjardins was the boss.”

Mr. Desjardins and Mr. Montagna
began to vie for power in the vacuum left by Mr. Rizzuto’s absence, the court
heard in the murder case.

Police testified that both clans
used Blackberry PIN-to-PIN encrypted messages, believing them to be more secure
because they move directly between devices over wireless networks, bypassing
e-mail circuits.

However, the RCMP had warrants to
intercept those communications in a probe code-named Clemenza that eventually
expanded to include the Desjardins clan.

RCMP Corporal Vinicio Sebastiano
testified that messages sent by the Desjardins clan showed they were annoyed
that Mr. Montagna’s men were horning on their bookmaking, loan sharking and
protection rackets.

“They’re still asking for
envelopes,” one message complained.

“He thinks that by intimidation
he will pick up all. No way,” said a message from Mr. Desjardins.

In their communications, the
Desjardins clan called Mr. Montagna “Mickey Mouse” or “Tin Man.”

The Desjardins BlackBerry
messages

Nickname for main rival: “Mickey
Mouse” and “Tin Man.”

The pledge to kill rival: “I made
one error with him. Won't make twice the same.”

The plan: “Yup, time to close the
book. The story is getting too long,” wrote one Desjardins associate. “Let's do
what we talked about before,” replied the boss.

The messages revealed that Mr.
Desjardins’ men conducted surveillance on their rivals and even managed to
intercept the Montagna Blackberry transmissions.

Officials do not know how the
Desjardins clan got their rivals’ messages, but the court heard that those
communications showed the Montagna group had a police contact, a Montreal
policewoman who was asked at one point to check license plates for the gang.

________________________________________

The trigger

The morning of Sept. 16, 2011,
Mr. Desjardins, who was driving a BMW X5, and his bodyguard, Jonathan Mignacca,
who was at the wheel of a Dodge Journey, were parked near a waterfront bike
path in Laval, north of Montreal.

A man fired at them with an AK-47
assault rifle. Mr. Mignacca shot back with a .40 Glock pistol. More than 20
shots were exchanged, hitting both cars, before the gunman fled on a Sea-Doo
water scooter.

The court heard that Mr. Montagna
immediately contacted the Desjardins clan to say he was not behind the attack
and to ask for a meeting.

Mr. Desjardins, however, began
discussing ways to kill Mr. Montagna, police said in court.

“I made one error with him. Won’t
make twice the same,” Mr. Desjardins vowed in a message.

At the same time, he was helping
plan the marriage of his 24-year-old daughter, Vanessa. The Oct. 1 reception
took place at a golf club, and police stood outside to record which of the 300
guests had mob connections.

“Mickey says he’s bringing in
guys from NY down to help him,” Mr. Mirarchi wrote.

By Nov. 15, Mr. Mirarchi wrote:
“Yup, time to close the book. The story is getting too long.”

Mr. Desjardins replied: “Let’s do
what we talked about before.”

There was an exchange in
mid-November to arrange a meeting with Mr. Montagna.

The court heard that Mr. Montagna
had been sending conciliatory signals. “I would never let you down, despite any
stupidities among us,” said one message to Mr. Desjardins.

________________________________________

Fatal meeting

The court heard that the morning
of Nov. 24, Mr. Montagna parked downtown, then took the subway to Montreal’s
east-end, where he was picked up by Jack Simpson, a Desjardins man driving a
white Ford pickup.

Mr. Mirarchi reported that the
police had already arrived: “Lots of blues around there.”

Mr. Montagna had been shot three
times and died from abdominal trauma caused by a bullet that entered his back.

Secret devices

By the evening, the Sûreté du
Québec, which investigated the murder, was notified that the Mounties had
wiretaps incriminating the Desjardins clan, the court heard.

The next night, the RCMP put an
officer outside Mr. Desjardins’ house while a team in east-end Montreal tailed
a Jeep Cherokee belonging to one of his men, Felice Racaniello.

In both cases, the officers used
a controversial machine variously known as mobile device identifier (MDI), an
IMSI catcher or a Stingray.

The MDI mimics a transmission
tower and helps identify the mobile phones in a given area. The covert
deployment of MDIs by law-enforcement has raised concerns about their invasive
nature. Their use in the Montagna murder investigation ultimately shaped how
the case ended.

The RCMP eventually intercepted
about 860,000 PIN-to-PIN messages from 193 Blackberry phones.

Mr. Desjardins and his men were
arrested on Dec. 20, 2011.

Mr. Desjardins was wearing a
bulletproof vest when police showed up at his office. At his home,
investigators found a security camera system, a radio scrambler and a loaded
Glock pistol, its serial number filed off.

In court, defence lawyers began
raising questions about the MDIs and how the RCMP had obtained the Blackberry
encryption key. “The Crown theory is circumstantial and depends on inferences
about who was using which Blackberry at relevant times,” one defence factum
said.

As it had done when it got caught
trying to plant a bug on Mr. Desjardins’ lawyer in Newfoundland in 1991, the
RCMP argued that court disclosure would jeopardize its investigative
techniques.

Last December, a judge ruled that
the RCMP had to share more details about its technology.

In July, Mr. Desjardins had
pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder. On March 30, the seven other
defendants also pleaded guilty to lesser charges.

The case was closed, with no more
divulged about the MDIs or how the Mounties could read Blackberry messages.

“This is a matter of
prosecutorial discretion and I will not comment further,” provincial prosecutor
Robert Rouleau said when The Globe asked about the murder charges.

________________________________________

The Godfather returns

While Mr. Desjardins waited
behind bars for his trial, Mr. Rizzuto had flown back to Canada at the end of
his U.S. prison sentence in October, 2012.

The Godfather’s return was
followed by a series of murders, including that of Mr. Desjardins’
brother-in-law, Joe Di Maulo, and Mr. Desjardins’ best friend and business
partner, Gaétan Gosselin.

Still, Mr. Desjardins stuck to
his earlier boast that he was no loose-lipped man.

At a bail hearing in April, 2013,
he objected when the Crown suggested that in his previous drug conviction he
had taken the fall for Mr. Rizzuto. “I’m sorry, sir, but Mr. Rizzuto was never
convicted with me,” he insisted.